These two 'nuns' are making a living selling pot products on Etsy

Less than a year ago, Darcy Johnson, 24, was flipping burgers at a Jack In The Box. She attended a community college near her home in Washington state, and grew marijuana plants in the backyard. Then a mutual friend introduced her to Sister Kate, a spirited older woman who, at the height of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, began dressing like a nun in protest of US Congress declaring pizza a vegetable. The media dubbed her Sister Occupy for her methods of bringing attention to political issues.

Sister Kate, whose real name is Christine Meeusen, wanted to start a medicinal cannabis company that erased the negative stigma around the plant and united women who believed in its healing powers. After a 30-minute call, Johnson was sold. She traded her jeans and flannel for a habit and migrated to California.

"When people say, 'Well, they're not real nuns,' my answer is there are no nuns. They're going extinct in this country," Sister Kate says. "If you look up what makes up a sister, there are five elements. ... We live together, we wear the same clothes, we take a vow of obedience to the moon cycles, we take a vow of chastity (which we don't think requires celibacy), and a vow of ecology, which is a vow to do no harm while you're making your medicine."

After new legislation rendered the operation illegal in their original location, the sisters packed up their 12 plants, three cats, and vast candle collection and moved to a pot-friendly town in Merced County, California, where Tech Insider caught up with them.

UPDATE: After this article was published on March 24, the Sisters of the Valley online store was removed from Etsy. To learn more about their products, you can reach the sisters on Facebook.

On a Saturday morning in California's sundrenched central valley, Sisters of the Valley are busy at work.

Melia Robinson

Sister Darcy starts the day with two to four hours of what the self-proclaimed nuns call "Bible time," where she responds to customers' questions on Facebook and email. Taking time to answer people in pain brings them closer to God, she says.

Melia Robinson

The sisters get asked a lot of questions. That's because they deliberately don't explain their products all that well online.

Melia Robinson

Sisters of the Valley make a line of topical salves, tinctures, and oils made from hemp extract, which contains cannabidiol, or CBD, an active ingredient in cannabis. They allegedly provide relief from pain, PTSD, debilitating diseases, and more.

Melia Robinson

The sisters once gave clear details on the products' chemical makeup, but the mere inclusion of the words "drug testing" and "THC," the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, got them booted from Etsy. (Their products do not get users high.)

Melia Robinson

Now, they keep it simple. Say as little as possible. It's legal to ship hemp products across all 50 states when the THC concentration is less than 1%. Some groups suggest CBD oils aren't all that therapeutic for this reason.

The sisters grow at capacity (12 plants) in a makeshift greenhouse on their property. While their bud looks typical, there's some magic in the medicine-making process.

Melia Robinson

The sisters claim to infuse their products with healing powers through a series of rituals. For starters, they only manufacture from the new moon to the full moon.

Melia Robinson

On the first day of the cycle, they hold a ceremony under the stars to bless their work table. They give thanks to Creator God and Mother Goddess for calling them to this profession.

Melia Robinson

I visited the Sisters of the Valley on a tincture-making day, and watched Sister Darcy slice open what looked like a three-gallon bag of ground hemp.

Melia Robinson

Sister Kate lit a a bundle of sage and swept it over the bottles and ingredients, which includes a high-proof alcohol to dissolve the bud. She muttered some incantations.

Melia Robinson

Then they cleansed each other with the bundle of sage. "We're mostly borrowing from the Natives," Sister Kate says.

Melia Robinson

After consulting a YouTube video on her math, Sister Darcy weighed out the appropriate dosage of weed and scooped it into preparation jars.

Melia Robinson

For Sister Darcy, the routine of her work soothes her anxiety as much as the medicine does. (Though she admits she prefers consuming the leaves raw in a smoothie.)

Melia Robinson

"I didn't grow up Christian, to be honest," Sister Darcy says. She did a youth group stint in high school, but stopped attending church a year after she started.

Melia Robinson

"It wasn't right for me," she says. "Then I just made up my own church." She says growing her knowledge of the Earth and how she fits into it "makes the day easy."

Melia Robinson

Transitioning her wardrobe from jeans and flannel to the Sisters of the Valley's uniform — a denim skirt, white blouse, and a habit — was a piece of cake.

Melia Robinson

"I think that if you're proud of something that you do, everyone should know what you do," Sister Darcy says. "Show up."

Melia Robinson

The sisters' way of life was threatened in 2015. The town they formerly called home, Merced, California, banned the cultivation and sale of cannabis in response to a typo in a state bill, which threatened to pull cities' ability to impose local regulations.

Melia Robinson

Merced wasn't down to forfeit its control. Like many cities statewide, it rushed to ban the pot industry.

Melia Robinson

Overnight, the Sisters of the Valley became criminals. So, the sisters uprooted.

Melia Robinson

They bought a foreclosed home in Merced County, California, where county law permits residents to cultivate 12 cannabis plants per land parcel.

Melia Robinson

Sisters Darcy and Kate have big plans for expansion. They hope to grow franchises, called abbeys, from coast to coast over the next five years.

Melia Robinson

"We would like it to be such that wherever you saw women in their blue jean skirts, white blouses, and hats ... those women know about cannabis. They know about pain relief," says Sister Kate. "Our brand is uniting the women who feel the same."